my jaundiced eye

a devastating loss

It is with an extremely heavy heart that MJE has to inform my readers of a devastating loss suffered by the OB&C. On Saturday last his beloved 2001 S150 chevy truck was stolen from the driveway in nola in an act that can only be described as wantonly malicious, cruel and idiotic. His agony was compounded by the fact that he had within the truck triple backups to everything he might need should he suffer a zombie attack or the apocalypse. Plus his spare keys to not only the truck but to every other lock he has ever come into contact with during the course of his lifetime, including but not limited to his lab at the university of washington from 1988, his lab at tulane dating from 1992, his prior truck, a ford ranger which was melted down in 1996, three boat sheds, a storage unit, the current lab, the apartment, two houses (well four if you include the two houses we used to own), two gates, his bike and a friend’s roof rack.

If memory serves, he also had three tire jacks, a large collection of music cassette tapes, about twelve bungee cords, copies of the home loan statements of two houses, a six pack of paper shop towels, two or three cans of wd-40, graphite, motor oil, gasoline additive, jumper cables, tow cables, a battery tester, three large boxes of tools, a 12’X16’ tarp, an air compressor, a rain poncho, a pair of hunting chest waders and assorted cammo attire, orange plastic hunting tape, two air horns, a bag of satsumas, a three pack of beanie weenies, a couple of quarts of gator aid, several rolls of duct and masking tape, a case of bottled water, bug spray, a big tube of gold bond exzema cream, at least five chap sticks, sharpies, lots of flashlights and extra batteries, ball point pens, small notebooks for jotting down brilliant thoughts, tire gauges, a box of extra large contractor bags, and last but not least checks for a total of $53K which were endorsed and ready for deposit in the company account, on the dashboard. If we’re lucky he didn’t have a copy of his social security card and the folder with all of our passwords in there, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

If there are seven stages of grief, the OB&C has strung that out to at least eighty-two and he’s still on number one. When he noticed that the truck was missing, after having ridden his bike by the empty driveway twice, he borrowed a neighbor’s car and drove all over town looking for it. He even followed some poor man whose truck sort of looked like his but not really, honking and flashing his lights but lost him on the expressway. He is now convinced it was stolen by an hispanic who has now driven it to guatamala where he believes that that particular make, model and year are in very high demand. How he got that notion into his head is anyone’s guess, but I can guarantee that no one will ever be able to disabuse him of it.

The good news is we don’t think the truck was damaged in the heist as there was no broken glass on the empty parking spot. The thief was obviously not only a professional but also extremely clever as he managed to find the hide a key ingeniously hidden under the driver’s side wheel hub. Just goes to show, no mater how shrewd you are, there is always someone who is one step ahead.

MJE is worn out just describing this ordeal and I haven’t even gotten to the part about getting the OB&C out of his state of suspended animation and onto the next stage of grief. Stay tuned, it’s riveting. And exhausting. I need a drink.

president-elect trump

So working my way through the stages of grief after the election of the conald as president. I don’t even know what the stages are but I am pretty sure that I am not very far along. Trying to read the tea leaves in the conald’s selection of members of his transition team which is a crazy quilt of insiders, outsiders and know-nothings. MJE was heartened that the omnipresent campaign sycophant and speech background obscurer c biggie c was summarily dumped from the team’s top teir. May have something to do with the fact that he indicted, convicted and sentenced the conald’s son-in-law’s father to a rather long stretch in the pen for some sort of criminal malfeasance. I suppose it made him feel like a big-shot at the time but turns out it was a big shot in the foot. Ouch.

So the good mr pence has stepped in to oversee the ragtag lot. Better watch his step, don’t want to step on any of those trumpets toes…I’m no historian but I would venture to guess that this is the first presidential transition team that has the children of the candidate as primary advisors, because there are no competent professional governmental experts to rely on? MJE can only speculate that perhaps their primary job is to keep daddy from appointing anyone to key white house positions that might be beyond the pale.

Mission impossible. Blood may be thicker than water but not thick enough in politics. Crazier heads have prevailed and steve bannon, ceo of breitbart news a leading purveyor of alt-right news who helped the conald “hone his message” of anti-immigrant, anti-muslim, misogyny etc. has been picked to become “chief strategist.” For a man so obsessed with image, it seems odd that the conald would choose someone who looks like he was just dragged out of a skid row gutter.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but the conald’s vagaries in staff appointments, in addition to his total ignorance of the basics of governance is truly frightening. His support for far right wing ideology has latinos, gays, muslims and those who condemn hate speech protesting and fearing for their future and the future of their country.

On the other hand, the government has managed to do almost nothing for the last four years so let’s just hope that trend continues. #stasisrocks!

and the winner is…

and the winner is....-1.jpg

oh no! bama care

MJE is going to take a quick commercial break from politics and tackle another topic just this once. Obama care.

This program is in the headlines right now because it has been announced that premiums may go up as much as twenty five percent in the coming year…. AAAAGGGGHHH….zombies are on the front porch, help me! They’re eating my dog and tromping on my landscaping!

I’m not sure where people get their health insurance but from a lifetime of paying premiums to BC/BS I can state without fear of contradiction that my premiums rose about 20% on average every year. And hello, did I hear anyone screaming about it, no I didn’t because the fact of the matter is that insurance companies of every stripe have you by the short hairs. What are you going to do, say screw you and get insurance somewhere else…oops, then you get into the whole pre-existing condition fun house, or the you’re pretty old to be shopping around septic tank, or whatever other excuse they can haul out to either deny you coverage or to charge you ten times what your current provider does. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t. And when they get tired of you because you actually filed a claim, you’re dropped like one of the conald’s wives…I was lucky enough to get sick when I was 64, maxed out my annual and lifetime deductions and finally got a portion of my pound of flesh out of my long and costly association with BC/BS…and the best part of it was that as of 1/1/16 I was on medicare and they couldn’t drop me…and people don’t believe in karma?

But BTW, medicare ain’t no picnic either, lower premiums, really? Single payer!!!! Woo hoo!!!! By the time I pay the regular (income adjusted) premium, add the extra part Z to cover the dreaded “donut hole” and the prescription add-on I am at about 140% of what I was paying BC/BS. Which unbeknownst to me is not even available to those of us who have survived long enough to enjoy our golden years unless we are covered by a major corporate insurance plan. You’re in, like it or not. Wanna contest a claim denial, opt for an IRS audit instead, it’s far less labor intensive and stressful.

So the conald (commercial break is over kids) is touting (or trouting in the vernacular) the tired repeal and replace trope. Part of his plan is to offer health savings accounts. Yo, dono! head’s up, HSA’s have been around for decades…and they are great. You sign up for a high deductible health insurance plan and you sock away $5K or so a year into an account that is untaxed as long as you pay medical bills with the funds. But, just so you know, that $5K doesn’t arrive on your doorstep like a publisher’s clearinghouse sweepstakes check, you actually have to have the money to put in there. So say you’re living on $50K a year before taxes, does it seem likely that you might have a spare 10% of your gross income to put in an HSA? Thanks for the thoughtful and incisive input conald.

Then there is the “erasing of state lines” thing…not sure about other providers but BC/BS seems to cover medical expenses incurred over state lines without a problem as long as your doctor is within the BC/BS network. Admittedly, coverage expenses can vary greatly from state to state so MJE is going to give the conald a passing grade for that, although he get’s an f for originality.

I can’t actually remember what the other parts of his plan were because when he reads from the teleprompter it’s like watching a hostage video, and I have to turn it off and lie down.

But the upshot of the conald’s plan is that everyone is going to have great, really great medical care for a low, really low price and we’re all going to beat the house at black jack. Speaking of which, how does a casino lose money…seriously, how does that happen? Maybe we’ll find out if the conald gets his hands on the us treasury’s checkbook…

@weiner

Jumpin’ jehohsaphat! is MJE the only person on earth, besides bernie, who is sick to death of shrillary’s emails. I thought we were (mixed metaphor alert!) in the home stretch and this chinese water torture of an election was almost over …but noooooo, there was one more curve ball no one saw coming…an intimation of further deception surfaced courtesy of the fbi, a byproduct of of their investigation into a sexual pervert, a man called weiner, who likes to send crotch shots of himself in his unmentionables to underage girls. And just to update any of MJE’s readers who may have recently crawled out of a cave without wifi , weiner is married to huma abedin, shrillary’s closest aide. Huma may or may not have exchanged emails with shrillary on weiner’s laptop, no pun intended, which is now in the hands of the feds.What does it say about us as a society that the groins of three men have figured so prominently in this election cycle.

MJE’s thinks the american public is totally missing the most important and mind boggling aspect of this tawdry tale.

A communal computer? What is this 1981? Seriously, people who can’t afford to feed their kids have their own computers…homeless people go to starbucks for the free wifi…every worker in every cubicle has a computer (or smart phone) squirreled away to secretly play fantasy football on the boss’s dime. There is a darn good reason they’re called “personal.” Even MJE and the OB&C don’t share a computer, however our emails are of absolutely no interest to anyone, even the recipients.

No matter who wins or loses the election, the republican pitch-forkers in congress will surely conduct endless hearings, grandstanding and wasting untold amounts of time and (our) money, trying to nail clinton’s electronic entrails to the wall instead of governing the country. Hey, they may even vote for her just so they can impeach her!

You heard it here first.

The only upside to this is if the conald does become president of the united states he’ll be as stuck as the rest of us and whatever idiotic ideas he might or might not have had to “make america great again” will be put on indefinite hold. But even better than that will be the spectacle of trump, having achieved the status of the most powerful person on the planet (in real life, not in his alternative universe) realizing too late that now he can’t get what he wants when he wants it like he could in the old days. SAD.

conald and co.

Okay, so MJE and the OB&C were having dinner with friends the other night…it was a 4-4 tie politically. MJE knew that going in and thought I’d just keep my powder dry and wait for someone else to launch the first salvo. My good pal grinapple stepped up to the plate within minutes…a lifelong repub (although his father served as a high ranking member of jimma carter’s admin), he is a well-educated, thoughtful, caring person as well as being a raconteur of the highest order in typical southern tradition. He doesn’t like the conald but he can’t stand shrillary and he he is desperate to see the fetid governmental swamp in washington drianed. He put forth an argument that there have been unprepared, inexperienced people elected president in the past but that they governed responsibly by selecting capable, thoughtful, professional governmental veterans to advise and tutor them.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the people with whom the conald has surrounded himself, a motley crew to be sure. Let’s start with his most trusted confidants and advisers the children of the corn (COTC) (see: Stephen King 1984 Thriller): ivanka, conald jr. and eric, offspring from his first marital foray. Unusual move, but they share his values and ethics so that’s something.

Next up we have corey lewandowski, a former bar bouncer (unverified but with the conald we live in a fact free zone and the core-man sure looks the part) whom he named as his original campaign manager. Perfect choice, as he had no experience running a political campaign, much less at the presidential level, just like his boss. He did however once work for a congressman ney who ended up in the clink over involvement in the abramoff scandal. He was also arrested and charged for bringing a loaded handgun (in his laundry bag) into the longworth house office building. Hey, I’m down with that, I always pack heat when I do my laundry (in my office). Plus he’s polish and we know what a sweet tooth the conald has for those eastern europeans…

After the COTC staged an intervention in the hopes that they might get big daddy to step back from the ledge and start acting like a real presidential contender instead of a deranged hamster, he reluctantly pivoted, sacked the core-man and took on kellyanne conway as campaign manager. An experienced operative, and one heck of a smiler, she is a perfect counterpoint to the conald’s perpetually pursed lips and scowling countenance. God help that poor wretch, imagine what her job is like…desperately trying to reason with the equivalent of an hormonally imbalanced temper tantrum-prone teenager who is fully prepared to burn down the house rather than clean his room.

Next up we have steve bannon, who is the “chief executive” of the conald’s campaign and who is also the chief executive of breitbart news, an organization that is on a perpetual witch hunt for voter fraud. But in a case of breathtaking irony, mr b is registered to vote at a house in florida which is abandoned and due to be demolished. Prior to that he registered himself using his ex-wife’s address, where he never lived…both residences happen to be in highly contested precincts in florida. Bannon is the conald whisperer hissing into his ear that should he lose it will be because of widespread voter fraud and a rigged system, something about which he knows.

Last but not by any means least we have roger ailes, who was recently forced to resign as head of fox news over multiple allegations (and a lawsuit) of sexual misconduct and who now has joined the campaign as an advisor. Frankly, MJE considers the mere sight of his repulsive mug as sexual harassment, which makes him a perfect ba-da-bing to the conald’s ba-da-bang whoever, wherever, whenever.

In electing the conald as president MJE likens it to trying to effect radical change to a dysfunctional mental health system by throwing out the experienced, but ineffective administrator and appointing the craziest inmate you can find to run the joint.

grope a dope

MJE is extremely sorry about the long lapse since the last post but I am virtually paralyzed by an election cycle so bizarre that even MJE’s twisted mind could not conjure it up. WTF is going on in this nutso country? How did our much lauded democratic landscape devolve into a huge septic field full of exactly what one would expect to find there. And worse, ever the gimlet eyed realist, MJE sees this fecal swamp expanding faster than the louisiana coastline is disappearing, and I fear that the toxic level of anger and resentment that the american populace seems to harbor against one another isn’t likely to dissipate come November 9.

That said, there is enough gallows humor to put a smile on even rudy giuliani’s disturbingly frightening bug eyed mug. When surrogates like rudy and newt start hopping on their high horses about fidelity and trust you really do begin to think you are living in the upside down, (see: Netflix: stranger things) an alternate reality that is a very dark and dangerous replication of the real thing. A world in which a man running for president of the united states can create a fact-free bubble in which everything he claims to be true is belied by what has actually transpired and verified either by his own words or by those of witnesses, yet is still swallowed snout to tail by his unquestioning followers.

Sorry, was trying to find something humorous in this scenario…stop. RESET.

Let’s take the debates…no seriously…take them, please. As I write this, I am watching the conald rant and rave over the allegations that shrillary was given the questions and answers for her debate with bernie, in advance, something which the conald is whining NEVER happened to him. :( No shite sherlock…what sane person would provide you with the garbled, irrational word salad that constituted your “answers”?

Let’s just relive a few of the agonizingly erratic, uninformed and mind bogglingly unhinged responses the conald provided when he wasn’t lurching around the stage like a guy looking for his glasses, until finally settling in so close behind shrillary that they might have been jammed in a crowded subway car.

Q: mr trump, what specific plans do you have to alleviate the wealth gap between the super rich and the poor of this country?

A: benghazi

Q: mr trump, could you please elaborate?

A: emails

Q: mr trump, how could a person who describes himself as the greatest deal-maker of all time manage to lose almost a billion dollars in one year in a rising real estate market?

A: isis

Q: mr. trump, you dismiss your incredibly disgusting, misogynistic comments about assaulting women as “locker room” talk? Have you ever actually been in a locker room?

A: Hell no! Are you kidding? Do you know how many athlete foot germs there are in a place like that? I wouldn’t go into a locker room if it were the only place on earth where I could grope a woman without witnesses! I mean look at my physique, do I look like someone who wastes my precious time in a gym?

Q: mr trump, after your having disparaged hispanics, muslims, immigrants, women, veterans, gold star families and the republican establishment (so far), how do you think that there are enough voters left in the country to get you elected?

A: Stupid question. Really stupid. You are a total loser moderator. But I’ll answer it since I’m stuck here for 90 minutes anyway. If I can get away without paying federal income tax for almost two decades, very publicly cheat on my wife, describe my daughter as “a nice piece of ass,” gloat about my ability to sexually assault women without consequence, declare bankruptcy six times and stiff hundreds of contractors and small businesses, illegally fund my campaign from my eponymous 5013c non profit foundation to which I haven’t actually donated in years, renege on a promise to contribute to a veterans support organization (until publicly shamed and then reluctantly contributing with funds from said foundation that had actually been received from other non-profits), have all of my crappy trump label suits, ties, sans-a-belt slacks, jock straps, support hose, and mens’ anklet golf socks made in china and cambodia while convincing my zombie followers that I will bring jobs back to america, then trust me, I can be elected president. I promise you.

burkinis

Summer is thankfully over but the lingering question for MJE is: What the hell is with those cheese eating surrender monkeys in france and their burkini ban??? MJE hasn’t been to a beach in years but from past recollections of the surf and sand set I would personally REQUIRE all bathers, male and female, to wear burkinis! Holy cow, the sheer mass of unattractive flesh gathered on any given piece of beach is enough to make me want to gouge my eyes out.

But back to burkinis…do the frenchie gendarmes de plage seriously think that these heavily swathed women are all hiding bombs underneath those yards of rayon? First of all, have they never witnessed the cling phenomenon when your clothes get wet…see: wet tee-shirt contests, or en francais, les concours des tee-shirts mouilles? Mon dieu! It’s like fricking shrink wrap! Short of the exposure of actual flesh there ain’t nothing that doesn’t show, including presumably any bulky suicide vests you might be wearing.

So if women choose not to expose their cellulite and muffin tops, who cares? Surely, between the secular population’s penchant for way too itsy-bitsy bikinis which cover rien and icky squeaky speedos showing off trop de teeny weenies, there’s more than enough flesh to be seen all over the french coastlines.

MJE says it’s time to let the burkettes enjoy their muhammad-given right to cover up and for the french to shut up.

shrillary

MJE gave the conald the what-for in the last post so in the interest of being fair and balanced I am training my sights on shrillary. There is so much to “unpack” there as the news nerds like to opine, but I really have just one fundamental question for her: why the hell didn’t she get a fricking face lift before she started running for president????

Did she think it would make her seem overly concerned about her appearance at the expense of being taken seriously? That it was too “girly”? WTF, look at john boehner and his man tan. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass what anybody thinks, he’s going orange or he’s going home. Or the conald for god’s sake, that comb over has enough product in it to meet the building code in tampa. You think he cares what people think, hell no, because he knows that everyone in the world, in the world, thinks his hair is great looking, so great looking.

But it’s not too late… if she gets elected, MJE thinks she damned well deserves to have a little work done. She’s got three months between election day and the inaugural, plenty of time for the swelling and bruising to go down. And I think everyone would applaud her bold move. I know I would. Aren’t we supposed to be in a post feminist world, whatever the hell that means. Listen, just because she’s the first female american president doesn’t mean she has to be a dead ringer for angela merkel, crap isn’t it enough that they obviously share a closet?

I know there are people who really just want her in shackles (better get XL, have you seen those ankles?) and hauled off to jail just because she’s a technoanderthal and couldn’t face having to figure out another whole email and phone thing. I am so with you sister, I’m asking santa for one of those jitterbug phones with the really big buttons that does nothing but make telephone calls. But I guess you can’t have one of those when you are secretary of state or president. So kick it old school, with real hand-written communications. After all we have the crazy amazing USPS at our beck and call, one forever stamp and done. Yes, the world crises may take a bit longer to be resolved but what’s a year or two in the great scheme of things? And, bonus points, you can blame the postmaster general if the entire middle east blows up.

But I guess MJE does have to address the nagging questions of shillary’s unfavorability/ untrustworthiness ratings…well you got me there. She reminds me of my hard-ass boarding school housemother, but with really elastic ethics. Mrs. Bumwad unfortunately never gave an inch when it came to everything from the dress code to the honor code. I know MJE speaks for the entire st. adnoid’s student population in saying that an occasional blind eye to misdeeds would have been greatly appreciated. Getting away with something you shouldn’t is a terrific morale booster as well as a great team builder. That’s probably why people working for shrillary are so loyal. AAA+ rating on glass door!

So the bottom line is: in this election cycle, if shrillary is elected, we have some hope but probably not much change. If not we’ll have plenty of change but little hope.

shrillary vs the conald

Okay for better or worse we’ve got our candidates: shrillary vs the conald. A hobson’s choice: sane but shifty or daft and dangerous. MJE is definitely more comfortable with a candidate who shades the truth (like who doesn’t every once in a while, seriously) than with someone who occupies an alternative reality: crooked hillary or demented donald.

But apparently the conald’s supporters have been over-served the koo-koo koolaid and stand behind him despite his seeming total ignorance of world events, his enmity toward people of different skin tones or religious affiliations and thinner skin than a spanish onion.

But let’s us give conald, credit where credit is due, he as a master at feeding his supporters just the right amount of pre-digested political pablum for them to intellectually absorb. His “solution” to every problem is reduced to as few monosyllabic words as possible, “build a wall,” “ban muslims,” “deport illegal aliens.” MJE’s suspects that the conald’s phraseology kills two birds with one stone: satisfies the appetite for simplistic solutions and allows the conald to get away without having to provide substantive answers to the country’s problems. And according to him, when the conald peers down from the tippy top of trump tower his view is of a country that has nothing but problems.

And poor mike pence (words I never thought would pass my lips), every time I see him standing behind trump he looks like he’s passing a kidney stone. But hey, he chose to throw his morals and christian values under the trump jumbo jet for the sake of….uhhh, what? Mike, Mike, Mike, ask yourself WWJD? So MJE’s sympathies are somewhat wan. Hey, if you hitch your political wagon to an egomaniacal stupid head whose sole raison d’etre seems to be to elevate himself to an object of unconditional adulation from the unthinking masses, well then my man you two are headed for the same special place in hell.

The conald has perverted the notion of the politician’s mantra of self-sacrificing public service to one of self-serving brand promotion.

Or is MJE just another loser who doesn’t get it?